Music History Class Set To Go Medieval

WILMORE, KY—Sit back and close your eyes as the Asbury University Music History and Literature class carries you back in time with performances of Medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque classics.

On Oct. 21 — in the Akers Auditorium at the McCreeless Fine Arts Building — the annual recital for the class will be held at 11 a.m. and is free and open to all.

The class will form a variety of instrumental and vocal chamber ensembles in the performance, and the String Ensemble of the Collegium Musicum will also be sharing several items.

The class will form an a cappella choir and sing two Renaissance motets by Tomas Victoria, including his excellent O quam gloriosum. Some of the women in the class will form a chorus of nuns and provide several variants of a famous Advent chant and carol, Verbo caro factus est. A men’s ensemble will be more decidedly secular, offering Tapster, Drinker from the late 15th century, and Morley’s famous madrigal, O Sleep, fond fancy.

The six-piece ‘house band’ performance will range from a 15th-century version of the chanson L’homme armé (The Armed Man) to several Branles, or ‘Brawls’— French dances of the early 1600s. Tyler Zweifel, guitar, will be adapting several lute pieces to his modern instrument. The Collegium Strings round out the instrumental pieces with a short suite by the Elizabethan Giles Farnaby and a mid-17th century Sinfonia by Rosenmüller.

Music history comes alive when the music studied in earlier periods can be performed, the class coming as close as they can, with modern instruments, to ‘authentic’ performance practice.